On leaving the inn--and making your way to the top of the street--you turn to the left; but on looking down, again to the left, you observe, below you, the great high road leading to _Caen_, which has a noble appearance. Indeed, the manner in which this part of Normandy is intersected with the "_routes royales_" cannot fail to strike a stranger; especially as these roads run over hill and dale, amidst meadows, and orchards, equally abundant in their respective harvests. The immediate vicinity of the town is as remarkable for its picturesque objects of scenery as for its high state of cultivation; and a stroll upon the heights, in whatever part visited, will not fail to repay you for the certain disappointment to be experienced within the streets of the town. Portions of the scenery, from these heights, are not unlike those in Derbyshire, about Matlock. There is plenty of rock, of shrubs, and of fern; while another _Derwent_, less turbid and muddy, meanders below. Thus much for a general, but hasty sketch of the town of Vire. My next shall give you some detail of the _interior_ of a few of the houses, of which I may be said to have hitherto only contemplated the _roofs_.
And yet I must not close my despatch without performing my promise about the CASTLE; of which indeed (as you will see by the subjoined miniature view) only a sort of ruinous shell remains. Its age may be a little towards the end of the thirteenth century. The stone is of a deep reddish tint: and although what remains is only a portion of the _keep_, yet I can never suppose it, even in its state of original integrity, to have been of very capacious dimensions. Its site is most commanding.
[157] The reader will find the fullest particulars relating to this once-distinguished family, in _Halstead's Genealogical Memoirs of Noble Families, &c_.: a book it is true, of extreme scarcity. In lieu of it let him consult _Collin's Noble Families_.
[158] [Mons. Licquet tells us, that in 1439, a Seigneur of Gratot, ceded the rock of Granville to an English Nobleman, on the day of St. John the Baptist, on receiving the homage of a hat of red roses. The Nobleman intended to build a town there; but Henry VI. dispossessed him of it, and built fortifications in 1440. Charles VII. in turn, dispossessed Henry; but the additional fortifications which he built were demolished by order of Louis XIV. &c.]